* How Internet Broadcasting Systems is using Akamai-IBM technology
Last month, Akamai and IBM rolled out EdgeComputing Powered by WebSphere, which extends IBM’s WebSphere across Akamai’s network of more than 15,000 distributed servers around the world.
Akamai says it is seeing some strong interest for the service and has nearly a dozen customers using the service already. Among those customers is Internet Broadcasting Systems (IBS).
Internet Broadcasting Systems operates Web sites for local television news stations across the country. It regularly polls viewers for feedback on the content it is providing. When big news breaks, the polling application gets huge spikes in traffic. IBS was looking for a way to manage that additional load without having to add expensive hardware.
With Akamai EdgeComputing Powered by WebSphere, IBS is pushing the Web-based polling application out to the edge by running it on WebSphere across Akamai’s network.
Dave Abbott, CTO of IBS, says IBS has been able to reduce the load on its origin servers by nearly 99%. In addition, Abbott says IBS can roll out additional applications on the WebSphere platform without having to worry about maintaining additional hardware.
Annie Boyer, director of product management at Akamai, says the idea of the service is to provide the same scalability and reliability that customers have found in moving traditional Web site content for application delivery. Akamai is providing the application infrastructure on-demand, expanding and contracting what is used depending on application needs.
Because the WebSphere platform is literally extended out onto Akamai’s network there is no need to change code when deploying Java applications at the edge. Developers just need to designate which Java components are processed at the edge.
“They no longer have to worry about capacity planning or the time it takes to budget to buy their own infrastructure,” she says. “They can concentrate on innovating.”
EdgeComputing Powered by WebSphere is priced based on the volume of application requests handled by the Akamai network.
